Is a modified FE (Engrng License) exam useful for admission decisions for graduate school?

Summary form only given as follows. The Fundamentals of Engineering (Discipline spec) is offered twice a year. The morning section tests the first two years of college and the p.m. section tests the subjects learned in the specific engineering discipline. The GRE Engrng test is no longer offered. This work analyzes whether the FE exam or a modified exam format would be useful for deciding admission to grad school. The FE exam is a nationally normed exam and is the first step toward licensure. It is also being used for outcomes assessment during program reviews and accreditation. The second part of the presentation deals with an analysis of the requirements of an entrance test for graduate study of two types: the professional degree and the research degree. An examination is made of the current FE exam with respect to its current format and how the types of questions and raw scores would be useful for an entrance type test. The current FE is centered around meeting the minimum competency requirements. The third part of the paper deals with how the criteria set (with respect to Item Response Theory) for the FE exam need to be modified so that it becomes useful as an entrance-type exam. The fourth part of the presentation addresses the issue of a criterion-referenced test versus a norm-referenced one when considering the issue of using it for making decisions for grad school admission. Finally, the presentation concludes with the practical issues of building a modification of a standardized test as well as the practical matters involved in obtaining support for its use as a tool for selection decisions for graduate school.